


Casebook of Amelia Watson [Hololive Fanfiction]

by ThalioTP



Category: Hololive, Hololive CN, Hololive En, Hololive ID, Hololive JP, Holostars, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: Adventure, F/F, Fantasy, Lovecraftian Shenanigans, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Time Travel, my friend told me to be more open with tags, space travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27842707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThalioTP/pseuds/ThalioTP
Summary: In this world, the line between truth and lies blurs as the veil that obscures reality from the realm of the paranormal often merges in shape of myths and legends.Amelia Watson is a self-proclaimed detective of the occult from a not-so-distant past, until she was caught up in an unending mythos stretching across time and space. Encountering necromancers, pirates, futuristic elves, and moon goddesses, Watson's life turns upside down when she suddenly finds herself playing a part in a cosmic story of multiversal proportions.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 101





	1. What is a Myth?

**Author's Note:**

> Characters do not represent their real life personas. All rights belong to Cover Corp.

When people think of myths, they often refer to stories that parents used to tell to their children, and then the children would tell it to their children, and so on. However, the concept would fall flat at that fact: just simple stories. 

But Amelia Watson believed otherwise. She believed that myths and legends have some grasp of reality within them. An anchor, if you will, that serves as a basis for the stories that are shared in a large group of people. Was she arguing that humans are incapable of constructing a fantastical narrative within their own mind? Not exactly. All stories are exaggerated in one way or another, but like fogs on a glass, those exaggerations just obscure the audience to the events on the other side of the transparent barrier.

Which was why she was lying in a pile of garbage on some random alley in America, with her rear stinging in pain.

"An' stay out!" A nearby barkeeper barked with all the inner rage he was able to muster in his stout body. He threw something into a nearby puddle next to the garbage pile, before a loud bang of a metal door followed right after, leaving the young Amelia Watson alone in the dark.

"Hmph. Idiot. I got what I wanted," The young woman grumbled once she realized that the barkeeper was not coming back.

The foul stench of the scattered trash was starting to swell her nostrils, urging her to get up from where she laid. She jolted a bit when she was halfway standing, her hand rubbing a very irritated spot on her right buttock from outside her brown-colored skirt. The barkeeper wasn't lying when he said he was quite the good kicker in his neighborhood's soccer team back in his golden day. She probably deserved it for mocking him after that, too.

Amelia then felt the crown of her blonde-colored hair to be oddly light, before she suddenly glanced around her hastily. The capelet of her coat swishing around accordingly. Before her, she found a small puddle of after-rain water collected in one of the recesses of the concrete ground, where her brown deerstalker cap lay drowned on its back.

The blonde lifted the soaked garment from it's watery grave, drops of liquid were falling off of the damp fabric. With a light shake, the young woman lightly dried her cap, and placed it back on her head where it's supposed to be. She ignored the cold wet feeling on her hair, before taking out a small notebook from her coat's inner pocket.

"Black hair… female... East Asian… and was carrying a large book," The blonde messily scribbled into one of the striped pages, "She was definitely here, alright. But… dammit, always _was_ and never _is_."

Slowly she recalled the words of the patrons of the town bar from moments before, way before she was firmly told to leave by the barkeeper and she instinctively responded with a few words about his mother, then getting herself thrown out at his backdoor. Another young woman was here before dark. A young woman dressed in a very odd set of clothes, carrying a very large book, and looking very lost. A young woman that Amelia had been chasing for weeks now. The blonde almost felt like giving up, but not until she had found herself to be very close to the goose of her chase.

Amelia stopped her writing to avert her ocean-colored gaze towards the night sky, distracted with the sudden wind. The cold near-winter breeze of October 1913 hit her face, along with the light of a nearby lamppost just outside the alley. In this lonely, lonely alley, young Amelia suddenly remembered a nostalgic memory; something familiar to the loneliness that she felt in the dark during the moment. Slowly, her small body started to feel cold, her wet head felt even more so. An unspeakable hopelessness took over her for a moment, enough to make her close her eyes tightly to stop the weighing in her chest.

But the moment Amelia took note of the stars, she was reminded of the vastness of the night, and the mystifying nature of tomorrow. Such a big, big world filled with stories, and she was almost at the conclusion of one of them. A story that wasn't her first to experience, but wouldn't be her last either, but it was a story she was eager to see through.

"Alright," Amelia gruffly spoke under her breath, "I'm coming for you."

The moment before she left the alley, a page from the beginning of her notebook could be seen—right before disappearing into her coat pocket—forming the following words:

_Casebook. Property of Detective Amelia Watson. Occultist and researcher of the unknown._


	2. Who are You Stealing From?

A few weeks ago…

Inside the confines of a study in a rundown apartment somewhere in the rainy East Coast of America, a lone figure loomed over a small wooden desk, cramped between a great many number of scattered boxes and book piles while a loud storm wreaked havoc just outside the window. A lit candle that was almost at its last breath colored the youthful face of the sitting figure in bright fiery orange. The figure was no other than Amelia Watson, as seen by the short bob-cut blonde hair framing her ivory skin and blue-colored eyes.

Concentration etched the stillness of the young woman’s expression, unfazed even by the heavy rain. The gaze of her eyes locked onto the large book that sat on top of her desk; a large book that did not hide its ancient upbringing. With a slow and steady movement, her fingers traced over the time-eaten paper and the words written on it in mysterious black ink from many millennia passed. Her eyes scanned an illustration of a puzzling caricatured object that was most enigmatic and out-of-this-world, followed by a passage under it which spoke:

_ Incomprehensible in its nature; the being that which lieth dormant inside the hartes of common man. It seeketh nothing, but that of blasphemous cravings to the suffering of holy men. From the void beyond the touch of God, Creator of All, the Angel of Darkness calleth unto willing apostles with appendages of cephalopodan nature, to which their enticed souls are pulled away from the Grace of God and turn unto Sepulchres of sin. _

“Fascinating,” The young detective made a small hiccup as she spoke to herself under her breath. Her voice almost unheard from a faraway thunder, “Accounts written in the same ages and language as the Elizabethans. Almost as if written in under the shadows of the Renaissance.”

She gently lifted several pages at once, intending on skimming through her most recent discovery with haste. The page that came thereafter showed several different illustrations, one of which Amelia could make out an obvious shape of humans with tails similar to that of a fish, and the other described that of a trident, and lastly small passage that was placed next to a rough sketch of an ancient city:

_ Mine luck hath landed me in an encounter with a tribe in the isles of Greece; those of which pertaineth the blood of Atlantea, who once standeth alongside the kingdom of man . Therebeforn, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire hath blocketh portage of our pilgrimage to Italy with pistoleers and man-at-arms. Such predicament would resulteth in a confrontation with a nomadic colony neareth below of Greece to the meditteranean sea. We revealeth our kin to them as Followers of God; last of the Crusaders. We gaveth our word to bear no harm. To which the bloodlings of Atlantea kindly returneth our favor with knowledge of the distant past.  _

Amelia hummed, softly rubbing the tip of her index against the picture of the fish-men and their likes. The closer that she looked, the more it had seemed that the book before her was composed by different writers. The color of the papers, the handwriting. Was it catalogued somewhere down the line? Maybe by one of or at least the other members of the people who wrote it? 

The detective ran her finger down the side of the book, and lifted open another set of pages. And another, and another. Immortal Beings, Necromancers, Beast-men, Elves, even Gods of Death. The stories that were composed in the book were brimming with things Amelia could swear to have come from tall-tales. But this couldn’t be just some fiction. Like the Key of Solomon and King James I’s Daemonologie, the large book did not lie about its age. The tales spoken by the pages were tales as old as time itself. Legends and myths that were used as mere tropes to the point of repetitiveness were all here, but this was different and Amelia was sure of it. In a book as ancient as this, there must be some truth behind it instead of just a simple fairytale. Thinking of the possibilities of the truth made her heart race. 

However, there was one thing that rather stood out amongst the sureness of the facts, like a door blocking away the sight from the revelation behind it; no matter where Amelia tried to find it, there wasn’t any sign of a title, nor an author that created it. All books served a purpose, and finding its purpose was as easy as reading the name of said book, but there was none. The hardcover—Amelia thought to be made out of some sort of wood —only illustrated a number of oddly intricate non-euclidean shapes and lines. It did not match anything in her abundant record of the occult throughout the centuries. And the fact that it had no defining author and publisher, it was as if this book wasn’t meant to be opened at all, only to catalogue. 

The detective’s fingers flew towards the side of the book again, brushing her fingers against what she thought to be the leftover pages, only for her to realize that the amount of pages left on it didn’t seem to change much at all.

“Hm?” Amelia said to herself in rising confusion. She averted her gaze towards the side of the book, with her right hand lifting the leftover pages up including the hardcover with it, and her suspicion was proven to be right; she went back to the same number of pages left from half an hour ago, “What the —”

**CRASH!**

**BANG!**

“Hic!”

The detective jolted in surprise when a loud noise was heard from downstairs, just outside of her study’s door. It sounded like a glass breaking violently inwards. Something large came crashing into the floor right after, too. The rising tension that tugged her mystery-inspired heartstring was cut short when she immediately began suspecting the possibility of an intruder; or worse, a fire would break out if one of the candles downstairs were knocked over. With the small candle standing aloft on top of its holder in her right hand, she began rushing towards the door.

“Bubba!? Is that you?!” Amelia shouted out the second she got herself out of her messy study. 

Her eyes glanced sideways, towards the darkness of the wooden stairwell. Slowly she approached the railways, looking down towards the unknown. A second of silence but the sound of rain against the roof felt like an eternity, until a soft bestial whimper was heard.

“Bubba!!” The detective shouted at the top of her lungs. 

If it was the apartment, her research, her books, she had no difficulty losing. But to lose her only friend in the world… She didn’t waste any time on meager hesitation, and immediately dashed herself to the first floor. Rushing down the stairs, she raised the candle holder above her head to clear her vision. When it was time to turn a corner, Watson almost jumped a few steps over. The small fire held aloft to light her way once she was close enough to the sound of the whining, and suddenly felt herself almost blown away by something invisible.

The hallway around the corner of the stairwell had one of its windows blown off inwards, inviting unwanted storm winds upon the occupants of the apartment. Pieces of wood and glass scattered throughout the old oak floor as droplets of salty coastline rainwater drowns them every second. With her perception heightened from adrenaline, Amelia found three notable things amongst the chaos; firstly a large piece of red brick sitting idly near the wet wall, then, the sight of a hunting terrier cowering under a small drawer table, and in front of him —the last and most glaring out of all—a fallen wall-mounted candle slowly lighting the moth-ridden curtains on fire.

_ “Crap! So something was burning after all!”  _ Watson gritted her teeth. The wind from the outside must’ve blown away all the smoke. Now the rain and the flames were fighting one another for domination.

Hearing the hunting terrier howling when it noticed it’s master made Amelia’s blood boil. Without thinking, she braced herself for the wind as she suddenly stopped dead in front of the broken window, and ripped the curtain holders off of its rails with one hand. The candle holder lost its light from the strength of the wind without the detective even noticing; Watson was too busy stomping the flaming curtains to its demise.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Amelia muttered towards the shivering canine, urging it to come out of its hiding place with her free hand. A large part of her was glad that Bubba was unhurt, but she was rather slightly annoyed to know that her hunting terrier was being his usual cowardice self. Alas, her relief swelled triumphant, “Bubba, come here. Yeah, look, it’s just me.”

As Bubba looked towards the flaming curtains again and found it dead in a smoking blackened heap, he finally mustered enough courage to reveal himself towards the light of the moon. His dirty blonde fur is a bit wet from the droplets of the rain, same as Amelia’s current attire. The second he got his snout close enough to Amelia’s outstretched hand, the terrier woofed in glee. His energy came back as fast as it disappeared, it seemed.

Sighing, Amelia finally had time to think, even with her hand currently busy scratching her bouncy pup’s chin. She looked past her shoulder when something inside her memory clicked, eyes glazing over the building puddle on the floor. In it lied the red brick from before. The mysterious red brick that without question had broken the window in from the outside.

But why?

The answer couldn’t have been more apparent when she didn’t even make the effort to look out the broken window and immediately dashed upstairs once more. Bubba gave a short yelp when he saw her breaking off in a dash, before following suit behind her. 

When she got upstairs, as expected the door to her study stood ajar, as she had left it that way. This way it would’ve been easier to see the culprit in the action. And she was proven to be right on the money when, the second she stepped into the room, the first thing she saw was the shape of a human sitting on the windowsill at the end of her study.

Dark purple hair glistening wetly under the rainy moonlight. Magenta eyes staring back at the detective’s blue ones. Between the large garb that she wore, jutting out from between her arms, was the book of myths. That was when Amelia finally understood the severity of the situation.

“Ah,” The mysterious woman squeaked out, seemingly from surprise. Watson did not waste time to take advantage of this situation.

“Oi! Who do you think you’re stealing from, huh?!” The detective barked at the intruder.

The woman’s face flushed in fear, before hurriedly leaving the windowsill to the outside.

_ “Ah shit! I knew I should’ve just grabbed her from the start!” _ Amelia cursed to herself when she realized her mistake, not taking a moment’s hesitation to give chase,  _ “Stupid! Where did she even come from?! This room’s on the fourth floor for Pete’s sake!” _

After effortlessly maneuvering herself through her piles of book, the blonde was finally able to reach the window. She pushed her upper body through the other side, her face blasted by the night rain just to catch the sight of the mysterious woman that stole her book, only to find nothing but the dark silhouette of the city in the distance and the macabre night sky menacingly looking down on her. In front of her stood the other building, but were too far apart the gap between the two of them to make a jump. She looked down below, and was met with nothing but the darkness of the streets several deadly meters below; escape towards that would be fatal, yet there was no body.

It was as if the woman disappeared into thin air.

“No dice, huh?” The detective finally gave in to the circumstances and pulled back her head before closing the window shut. Bubba was sniffing her shoes in worry, to which Amelia gave a light pat to reassure him.

Her eyes glossed over the study room once again. Several things changed during her entire time leaving it. There were wet footprints on the wooden floor and some even stepped over the many manuscripts and paper lying about. The desk that she had used to read her book was empty, save for the darkness of the room and some water droplets scattered on its surface; all clues were signalling that the intruder had been present in the room, without a doubt.

A moment of silence passed as the detective loomed over her books and things in the dark, her body cold and damp from being drenched by the rain. The only light present was the light of the thunderstorm from outside. And in that small light, the shape of her face was slowly breaking into a smile.

“Wet footsteps, water droplets, and flying bricks. Not to mention that she spoke,” Watson muttered to herself as she advanced around the room. Just making circles over and over again with her gaze still locked into the darkness, “All lead to the conclusion of a walking, talking,  _ physical _ human. So the question is: how can a walking, talking human be able to disappear in such a short time?”

And then, with the image of the book of myths in mind, it was as if an epiphany dawned on her. She saw it from a mile away, of course, but at first she refused to believe it. Now, she didn’t have to reassure herself that the book  _ indeed _ had value. Watson was suddenly giggling to herself at this realization. Something in her heart started to sting like an amber burning, filling her entire body with jubilation. She recognized this feeling; it was the feeling of a new story being written.

“I ask you again,” Amelia said under her smiling breath, “Who do you think you’re stealing from?”


	3. Could We Have a Little Chat?

“It’s been raining for quite some time now, eh?”

“Ya. It’s not even monsoon season yet.”

The mutterings of the townsfolk were starting to grow louder, digging deeper into the goosebumps of her skin, every single time Ninomae Ina’nis passed through the streets in that godforsaken town. Or perhaps it might be the fact that she became quite accustomed to it, which only unsettled her more. Between the nearly-abandoned docks to which she had used as a hiding place from the eyes of the crowd, and the entire region of East Coast America in general, she couldn’t tell which of them she had spent longer in. The passing of time in a town without proper clocks were rather capable to drive one mad in the feeling of being lost.

There were two things that could explain how things had resulted in her current predicament: one was that Ina’nis had something important to do here, but unfortunately that had resulted in a dead end. And two, perhaps out of her own stubbornness, a dilemma had formed right after she had came to a dead end, only to convince herself to remain while thinking that coming here was a bad idea, so the girl knew that at this point going home wouldn’t lead to an outcome of her being the same as she was before. 

Inns after inns, Ina’nis had grown sick with the smell of sewage and alleyway haze from her window every time she woke up. Eventually, she found herself at the edge of the county, standing on an empty seaport and staring into the factories and the busy harbor on the other side of the bay. The sea’s winds were a much better substitute than the stench of the early ages of industrialization in the depths of the city. Thinking under the stillness of the vast ominous grey clouds was oddly calming; God knew she needed the tranquility after what felt like weeks being trapped in America. It was too bad knowing she’d have to leave this place soon, as well, or else she'd risk being caught up by—

“Well, ‘ello there, Missy~”

 _“Ugh, not this again…”_ Ina’nis thought to herself as a rugged-looking manstrided towards her with intent most foul.

“Why’s a pretty flowa’ like you hangin’ around these parts?” The man tried his best to woo her, even if what he got in return was a scowl from the girl, but it seemed like in his head he thought he was even more charming than in actuality.

That made things even more difficult; it would mean that he wasn’t going to go away so easily. The rugged-looking man stood almost at six feet high, and could easily empower the young woman with just one hand hidden in his trenchcoat and the other gripping her wrist. And as the pungent smell of beer from his bearded face was starting to get closer, Ina’nis was more and more inclined to hurt him if he even thought about touching her. 

“You better get away there, Harold,” A high-pitched voice suddenly interrupted them, “That one would do more than just kick your balls.”

“Hoo’s there?!” The rugged-looking man—now identified as a man named Harold—barked to the source of the voice.

Not too far away from where Ina’nis was standing was an abandoned warehouse. There, right at the open entrance where the rust-eaten sliding door was slightly ajar, a streak of blonde was swaying from the head of a young woman who was leaning at the door frame. Ina’nis couldn’t see her face from the deerstalker cap that she wore, but the young woman knew exactly who the stranger was.

“Guh… It’s ye…” And it seemed like Harold knew of her too, “Bugger off, ye crazy detective! This don’t concern ya!”

“Hmm, but I’m afraid it does. See, she’s an accomplice of mine. We’re solving a mystery together. So, I suggest you find other women to reject you,” The stranger’s cockiness seemed to only increase with each word, “Or do I have to tell Mr. Pierson that you’ve been blowing his company’s budget on booze again?”

“Bloody...” Harold shot his bloodshot eyes at Ina once more, before stomping away while muttering madly under his breath, “Accomplice… Bah! Reckon just anotha’ bloody occultist… Lucky ah dodged a bullet there…”

Moments passed, and the rugged-looking man finally disappeared from the scene. Ina’nis was somewhat relieved, but now she had another sort of worry to face.

“Ahh. Classic Harold. One of these days he’ll be sleeping with the fishes instead of catching ‘em if he keeps this up,” As if appearing from the darkness itself, was Amelia Watson. Dressed in her capelet and skirt, both of which flapping in the ocean wind, the detective boasted her arrival. Even her small mouth had a condescending smirk embedded on its edges, “So, then…. Shall we presume with your end of the bargain?”

“My what?” Ina’nis responded coldly.

“Well, I did just sort of save you,” Watson merely shrugged, “And that would mean you owe me one, yeah?”

“I could’ve handled myself.”

“Oh, I’m sure. Can’t say the same about the book, though,” The detective said, “Come, now. Don’t act dumb. Our eyes met that night in my apartment, it was like love at first sight!”

“Hardly,” Ina’nis scoffed.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t love at first sight,” Watson chuckled, “But we both know that book is worth something. And judging by how you’re even willing to steal it from someone, you don’t want it to be seen by other people, do you?”

The purple-haired girl was silent. Her gaze was casted downwards. She didn’t like this conversation, it was as if the blonde in front of her was dissecting all of her words.

“Well, I’m not going to give it back,” Ina’nis finally stated, intending to make her will clear.

“And why is that?”

“Because it doesn’t belong to you.”

Amelia made a small whistle with her mouth, acting as if in any way in awe. If anything, her eyes told Ina’nis that the detective knew she’d say that.

“Last I read that, I don’t recall ever seeing a name,” Watson put her hands inside her skirt pocket and moved closer to the purple-haired girl. Ina’nis somehow felt that Watson’s gaze was somehow different this time. Almost controlling, “Tell me, do… _non-humans_ even have names? Do monsters?”

That was when Ina’nis felt her stomach bubble with anger, “I’m _not_ a monster…”

“Kidding! Kidding!” Amelia threw her hands up the moment Ina’nis showed a sign of hostility, “Well, I was mostly sure that you’re human. You disappeared back then at my apartment, yet you’re still here in front of me, right now. If you were something else and you had that book already, I’d assume you’d just poof away.”

She was right. Even if Ina’nis hated to admit it, it was because of her stubbornness that she hadn’t left the city already; because she was _human_.

“You know what, let me tell you something,” Watson wiggled her index finger with a suggestive glance, “I know that book is important to you, and obviously, you need it more than I do. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I’m willing to help out.”

“Help out?”

“Yessir!” The way Amelia’s face lit up instantly almost seemed hilarious, “Amelia Watson, Private Eye, at your service.”

“Why?”

“Well…. Let’s just say I’m interested.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“Nooo, I meant in whatever you’re trying to do!” Amelia reassured her, “Think about it, whatever it is making you stay here, maybe I can help with it. And I won’t even ask for the book anymore. All I want in return is to let me see it through.”

“So you’re just going to let me, a suspicious person, do what I want?” Ina’nis raised an eyebrow, “Some detective you are.”

“Hey, you heard Harold, I’m a detective of the occult,” Amelia laughed, almost unnerved with being called something similar to a fraud, “I don’t really care about burglars unless what they’re stealing may or may not be sacred texts from a thousand years ago.”

“But you don’t really flaunt around your title like that to anyone, right?” Ina’nis asked, almost disbelieved, “It’s a wonder nobody has thought of you as a joke yet.”

"Haha, yeah..."

It was then that the detective was reminded of the stinging pain on her rear that she had carelessly earned from the barkeeper after antagonizing him when he had tried to shoo her off of his property by calling her a sham.

“So, may I know your name?” Amelia asked the purple-haired girl in front of her, “I already introduced myself, but if I had to guess again, I think you already knew me from way before today, correct?”

“Ninomae Ina’nis. And yes, I had to find you after I landed here. I was told that I could find the book in your possession after you… erm...” Ina’nis wasn’t sure if she should say that she knew of Amelia’s possession of the book because the townsfolk told her that the occult detective had been digging into 10 beached whale carcasses barehanded before coming out with it covered in viscera and bile from the waist down.

Thankfully, the detective did not seem to catch up. She seemed to be more interested in another issue, “Landed you say? Ahh, by boat from Asia, right?”

“Ah. Not exactly.”

“Oh?”

 _“Well, I suppose now is a good time to tell her rather than later,”_ Ina thought to herself with a sigh, “Ms. Watson, I’m from the future.”

Silence. Only the wind.

“Oh. Sorry, I thought for a second there you said you were—”

“From the future?” Ina’nis repeated, “Very Ina-xpected, huh?”

“What?”

“Nevermind,” The purple-haired girl dismissed her last second pun to save her from the mental shame, “I had a mission. If it wasn’t obvious, I had to retrieve this book.”

And then, from under the grey colored parka jacket that she wore—one of the only 5 clothing pieces that she brought in her travel including her pants, two shirts with one longer sleeved piece worn above the other, and her undergarments—, Ina’nis revealed where she had hid the book of myths.

“Aah,” Amelia nodded in understanding after a full thirty seconds of trying to digest the information, “Yes, that would explain your weird clothing style.”

Ina’nis frowned at the detective’s comment.

“Although, you haven’t returned to… well, whatever age in the future you’re from. Very puzzling indeed. Why is that?” Amelia asked again. At the moment, the detective was tilting her head and body side-to-side, as if scanning Ina’nis’ body for some sort of time travel device to back her claims.

It was then that Amelia noticed that Ina’nis’ face had darkened, and almost had a grim look to it. Before the blonde could ask the girl in front of her what’s wrong, Ina’nis had responded.

“In a few days… this town and all of its inhabitants will die,” The purple-haired girl revealed, “Half a million people; men, women, and children… will be swallowed by a sudden tsunami from the Atlantic Ocean overnight. The next morning what’s left was just destruction, and only one third of the corpses were found among the debris. The tsunami disappeared without a trace, just like how it appeared without warning...”

“That so…”

The revelation was a bit much for the detective; too much, in fact, that it became sort of difficult to recognize as truth. But regardless, Watson had to find out where Ina’nis was going with this.

“Yes…” Ina’nis nodded, “And… I decided to stay because… I want to stop it from happening.”

“You can stop tsunamis in the future?” The thought almost astonished the detective.

“No… not really,” Ina’nis admitted disappointingly, “But in some way if I can evacuate everyone out of here before it happens...”

The purple-haired girl averted her gaze to the lively port on the other side of the bay. Her body was as still as the ocean in front of her, only her dark purple hair. The book of myths were held in front of her chest, Ina’nis’ grip seemingly tightening around it.

Amelia could only watch, as Ina’nis was seemingly caught in her own thoughts. The detective herself was thinking, or rather, fantasizing, about this moment. It seemed the story had yet to conclude, even though the book of myths was right in front of her. As expected, really. The detective felt an odd combination of irritation and motivation. On one hand, she couldn’t have the book, but on the other hand there was more to the story than she had originally thought. 

Furthermore, as a shred of doubt still lingered inside her mind, the detective wondered if she could trust everything that Ninomae Ina’nis said at face value. As imaginative as she was, Watson wouldn’t let herself fall into someone else’s attempt at making a fool out of herself. Though that doubt slowly dissipated when Watson included the possibility that Ninomae Ina’nis was just oddly too trusting, and that she looked too innocent to lie to the detective’s face, even if the person she was speaking with had been chasing her for weeks now.

All Amelia knew as a fact was that the book had value, that in itself was enough to keep the blonde girl going. But Amelia shouldn’t forget to remind herself that she knew next to nothing about the girl in front of her (although that info only made Amelia more passionate unfortunately).

From this point on, it was clear that Amelia’s goal had changed. And as for the book… perhaps that could wait until she had seen Ina’nis’ heroic side story play out.

“Alright, let’s do it,” Watson called out, bringing the purple-haired girl out of her trance. The detective was worried that she might’ve been too casual after hearing her entire town would die overnight, “Where do we start?”

Ina’nis blinked a few times, before strutting about in small circles, “U-umm… I have an idea, but I need your help. I saw this church tower somewhere near the—”

“Hold on, hold on,” Amelia suddenly cut her mid-sentence, “I think it’s better if we survey the nearby beaches. See for signs of falling tides, first.”

Then, the detective reached towards the inside of her capelet, and pulled out a small worn out notebook. With a flick of her wrist, she opened a random page while her other hand was ready with a pen.

“That way, we can have a little more time to _chat_.”


	4. What the Coming Tides Tell?

"—covered in the smell of rotting guts for a week. I mean, could you blame me? Beached whales in the middle of fall couldn't sound more suspicious."

"Right."

"Anyways, that's how I found the book and got myself banned from the public baths."

Ina'nis felt like admitting that being exposed to the subject of the conversation a much preferable alternative to freezing to death under the merciless winter wind alone was like finally coming to terms that she had finally lost her mind. She reasoned that at least Amelia wasn’t as intrusive to her personal space as she thought.

Right now she was scouting the beaches of Amelia’s town, the next day right after their first meeting. Ina’nis decided that it was a good strategy to start with her goal, preferable to hastily forcing every townsfolk out of the county right at the start. The coming disaster couldn’t have been a natural occurrence; that much was certain, even with the limited knowledge of the past that she had from the future. So, working together with a self-proclaimed expert of the unknown, perhaps she could pinpoint the exact moment the tsunami will leave behind a warning.

And surprisingly, Amelia was knowledgeable enough to hold up to her claims. Even as a person from the future, the detective’s grasp on her field of work seemed to have surpassed her own.

“Oh, there they are right now!”

The blonde woman pointed to the distance, towards the edge of the grey beach of cold frothy waters. There, sitting idly in rows just jutting out of the sand almost completely washed away, were several carcasses of whales, all seemingly had deflated and reduced to nothing but a blotch of skin and some bones.

Amelia jumped down from the dune of small grass and landed straight to the backshores, her shoes getting partially swallowed in the soft sand as she rushed towards the scene.

 _“Ugh, that girl…”_ Ina’nis calmly thought to herself as she tried to catch up with Watson’s constantly rising enthusiasm.

The both of them slowed down just as they reached the gigantic corpses. Watson glanced back at her companion as they circled around the area carefully, “These things don’t just happen out of nowhere right? Not to mention said fellas aren’t even native to the East Coast. They’re bowhead whales, mind you. I did a little research beforehand and found these guys were like a thousand and six hundred miles away from their habitat.”

 _“Changes in wave patterns, maybe? Earthquakes do that sometimes. But it’s not enough of an evidence,”_ Ina’nis sniffled, even more than a month old these carcasses still oozed quite the smell, “And where did you say you found the book?”

“That one, if I’m correct,” Watson singled out one of the many whales, “Doesn’t seem to be any different from the rest of the whales. I’ve checked. What’s the deal with that book, anyway? Seems like it’s just bringing trouble wherever it goes.”

The purple-haired girl seemed to be contemplating an answer, “That’s… classified.”

“By who? You? Why?” The detective approached the purple-haired, the tone of her voice unchanging, “Is there some kind of secret, malevolent time-traveling organization that you work for or something?”

Ina’nis shot her a look, “What about you? Why are you so used to these kinds of things?”

“I wonder about that too sometimes,” Watson smirked, “Seems like I just have a bit of screws loose in my head.”

“... The book shows up whenever something significant happens,” The girl from the future told her. The image of the beached whales stuck in her mind, “I can only tell you that much. In this case, it’s the disaster that struck… err… _will strike_ … this town.”

“Hm,” The detective hummed in acknowledgement, her gaze looking around the beach… until it landed on a spot somewhere far away, “Um… is that supposed to happen in the future?”

Ina’nis raised an eyebrow in confusion until she looked at the direction Watson was looking.

There, smack-dabbed in the middle of the ocean, was a glimmering blue spire pointing upwards to the grey gloomy sky.

* * *

“Hey, kid, you lost or something?” 

“Little girl, where’re yer parents?”

“Ugh, what’s that smell??”

She didn't expect such welcomes from the townsfolk when she first arrived. It upset her to some degree, if she was honest. But at the end of it all, minding it was of no use, not with the jumping glee in her chest. She was so excited just to have arrived there, after so long being trapped at home, stretching her legs where her feet have never touched before was certainty a sensation she could relish in for centuries to come.

Gura tried to remind herself that she was visiting there in the first place for a special reason, so she didn’t have time caring for other people at the moment. Perhaps later… but then again Gura remembered that they wouldn’t be here then either.

“What a shame, what a shame,” Gura sang to herself as she traversed through the cobblestone roads and past the grey houses. Thoughts jumping from one trivial reverie to the other.

That was when a feminine voice got her attention.

“—I’m telling you, at least we should take a look at what it is!”

And another, different voice responded.

“What’s there to look?! It’s here right now! We need to warn the town before it’s too late!”

“Aha! You there!” Gura confidently shouted out to the two young women in her sights, “You two look like you’re competent enough for a couple of humans!”

Yes. The young were especially sharp and keen. These ladies would know exactly what Gura was looking for in that town.

The blonde and the purple-haired woman turned their heads simultaneously, and what dawned upon their vision was the shape of a human but smaller; smaller than the two of them, in fact, that they almost mistaken Gura as a preteen. It didn’t help that Gura looked and sounded like one either.

“Salutations! Greetings! Yo!” Gura chirped as she skipped towards the two humans, until she noticed their perplexed faces, “Whassammater? You look like you’ve just seen a walking shark or something.”

The blonde turned her attention back to her friend, "Listen to me! I don't know what we're up against! I have a feeling you do, but by the looks of it, it seems like you're walking blind too."

"What does that supposed to mean?!" The purple-haired girl chastised.

"I've been thinking, if time can be rewinded then isn't there a possibility that you could've done this more than once? Yet here you are still stuck arguing with me instead of just telling me what's going to happen."

"Time travel doesn't work like that, I—" She pursed her lips, face slowly reddening in annoyance, "You're right. I haven't done this before. I'm totally walking blind. Which is all the more reason that the most logical action would be to warn the town as soon as possible!"

"Uhh, hello, friends?" Gura interjected again, feeling a bit down from being ignored, "Yoohoo, may I be bestowed with assistance during my most troubling time?"

"Kid," The blonde started scornfully, "Get lost, alright?"

"Miss Watson!"

"Geez. What attitude have you surface-dwellers developed these past few centuries?" Gura scoffed in disbelief, giving her best impression of a last straw. She walked away from the two girls just as quickly as she had approached them, muttering to herself in irritation; "You could've at least try to be more polite before you die."

"Wait," The purple-haired girl called, her voice almost sounded shocked, "What's that poking out of your cloak?"

Gura looked past her shoulder, and down her greenish smooth-surfaced garment and saw a blue caudal protruding out from the back of her two bare legs.

"Oh, you haven't seen an Atlantean before?" Gura's mind clicked when she said that, "Guess that explains a lot."

"A wh—?"

"You two better steer clear then," The small girl-like figure suddenly warned, "In the old days there would've been tributes. That's one way to greet us usually. Shows that you mean no retaliation."

A scream was heard. Both Ina'nis and Amelia shot up their heads. Somewhere, a woman's cry broke the silent air of the backwater town. 

"I would've let today slide since now I know you two have no idea what's coming. But my friends won't be too tolerant."

As the odd little girl in front of them kept talking, the more that the atmosphere felt like it was turning sinister, as if something dreadful had befallen them.

"They don't speak your tongue like me, you see. When they'll see that there's no peace offering, sparing any of you is meaningless."

More screams. Random ones. Some sounded shocked, confused, others more painful. Then, between them were gargling voices of an unknown source. They were almost laughing.

"So there's no use trying to stop them."

* * *

"Ma'am, the time flux is failing."

"Multi-dimensional stability dropping at an accelerating pace too."

"Communication with Jumper is still unsuccessful. Should we proceed, Miss Enma?"

The strong summer wind blasted from the east. The busy voices of mechanical ticks and computer beeps were drowned in the gushing of the invisible current. Even when the monsoon sun blared hotly against their skin, the many workers standing idly together in one place were still deeply concentrated with their own tasks. Each individual knew the importance of their actions, and the loss that was risked to come when they didn't do theirs properly. But above them all, one woman's focus surpassed those working in front of her. To her, the outcome was more than losing. It was an endgame.

Red eyes laid fixed towards a giant dodecahedronal contraption just right behind a pair of square-rimmed glasses. The thing in front of her was the only thing sticking out like a sore thumb, because everything else around her was a giant pile of dirt, grass, and rotting debris from a gigantic ocean flood that had long subsided away before her crew had even arrived there. The machine's low rhythmic hum, suspended on four strong legs to keep it above the ground, could be heard even from twenty feet away, which was where the woman and her crew was working.

"What's the status of the flux?" The woman asked sharply. 

"Unstable, Miss Enma," Said a female staff member in white crouching next to her with a small computing device and screen, "It's like something is tempering the flux from inside the pocket. Either that or…"

"Ina is trying to rewrite the flux," Enma finished the sentence for her, to which the female staff member nodded in response.

The tall woman sighed in exasperation, her mind treading between the need to shout in anger or facepalm in the absolute foolishness of one of her best staff.

"Ma'am, I don't think that's the case," A male staff member chimed in. He was working on a rectangular table, to which it held several contraptions and screens more so than the female staff from before, "I'm getting an odd feedback from the flux. It's neither the stopwatch nor the Jumper herself. It's clashing with the main feed."

Enma rubbed the edges of her chin, "Can you think of a source?"

"Not that I know of…" The male staff member grimaced, "Unless we get communications back online, we're in the dark."

"Dammit…"

Enma looked past her shoulder, to a small white tent in the background. There, even when it was empty from all the staff gathering outside, a couple of metal boxes and tables could still be seen. And in one particular table in the middle laid an object; the rectangular shape and its purplish color belonged to no other object but the infamous Book of Myths. Even when sitting idly from afar, one could feel its intense presence. It was like standing one realm with something out of this world.

The bespectacled woman looked away. The name tag hanging around her neck brought her back to her senses, and to her duty. With a moment's close of her eyes, Enma faced her crew once more.

"Resume with the plan. Keep reporting the abnormalities within the flux."

"Ma'am?" The female staff member said.

"The mission is yet to be finished. As long as the watch still generates feedback, we haven't lost hope."

""Yes Ma'am!"" The other staff chimed altogether, trying their absolute best at their own individual tasks.

Truly, Enma had not a doubt in her mind that they could still pull off their mission, even if the results would be monumentally different from what they had been anticipating. But from what they've experienced and learned, was that they needed to put more trust in themselves, and their sole Jumper.

The blue triangle logo in each one of the staff's name tags stood for that exact purpose: trust in the impossible. 

Even if they needed a miracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An actually inhumane Gura, yay! Haven't read that version of A Shork since I've been here so far, tbh.


End file.
